


Leave It All Behind

by Alice_h



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Future, Leaving Home, Science Fiction, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29965053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alice_h/pseuds/Alice_h
Summary: Elli, a young woman living on a planet Earth rife with discrimination, plans her escape to somewhere she can be herself. But as she boards the ship that will take her far away, there's a familiar face waiting for her.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Leave It All Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a submission for a collection that was not accepted (but it was the first time I'd ever done that so it didn't bug me too much!). Now on AO3!

Portside was a dump. Both in a literal sense – much of the city had been built over a landfill site that had reached capacity in the early 21st Century – as well as a metaphorical one. Home to one of the largest freight facilities on Earth, the city had been hit hard, as had most of the planet, by the move towards complete automation of manual labour in the first decade of the 2100s. Today, the whole planet had a reputation across the Commonwealth for being the sort of place you wouldn't want to linger around, and Portside exemplified the worst of it. Those that could afford to leave did so, leaving behind the less fortunate – addicts, outcasts and those without any hope remaining – to a life of being forgotten.

By day, the city was a bleak urban sprawl, grey high-rise buildings towering over downtrodden citizens trying to make it to supermarkets to spend their unemployment credit on bland processed food before anyone could wrench them into an alleyway to be mugged. At night, Portside became a neon-lit cesspit, where vices both legal and not-so-legal became trivially easy to indulge in. Drunks roamed past seedy nightclub entrances, stumbling around short-skirted women eager to earn a few dollars in any way they could, the smell of drugs hanging in the air all the while. The people here were desperate, turning to crime to survive and alcohol and narcotics to forget, and few among the billions in the Commonwealth even seemed to care.

But Portside's worst feature, at least to those on the receiving end, was the rampant discrimination that had risen from the city's frustration at its situation. Though no-one was really any better off than any other, one group of people felt they were above everyone who wasn't like them – The Defenders, they called themselves, though what they were defending was anyone's guess. They had started off as a group of vigilantes, hell-bent on finding someone to blame for their own misfortunes, but had legitimised themselves by working their way into the local and planetary governments. It was their determination that the city in which they lived, and then the planet, would rise to prosperity once again, and that returning to the values and ideals of the mid-20th Century, a time they saw as a golden age, would achieve this. That belief led them to marginalise the people they were convinced had brought Earth to its knees, those who were similarly shunned in the era they idealised – the people who looked different, loved the wrong people, thought differently to them or didn't otherwise fit their narrow view of what they believed a person should be.

Mostly they did this passively - refusing to serve those they disliked in shops, for example – so that their targets were left in no doubt as to their position in society. If you were unlucky enough to find a group of them together, you ran the risk of having your path blocked or a stream of verbal abuse launched at you. And, while the leaders condemned and distanced themselves from it, assaults and even murders had been committed in the name of the Defenders. If you weren't like them, you suffered – the city was hell if you were different.

Elli was different.

She couldn't really tell what it was about her that invited the shouted insults and threats from across streets, as full of bewilderment as they were disgust, or that got the long silences from snotty unemployment centre secretaries as they looked her up and down, eyes darting back and forth to her name and gender on their computer screens. There wasn't anything particularly unusual about any one part of her, not now she was three years into transition; she was a little taller than most, but not so much that she stood out in a crowd. Her shoulder-length auburn hair wasn't as thick and full as many women, but it was hardly thin. Nor did her voice seem particularly deep, thanks mainly to her tireless vocal practice. But there was something about how everything combined together that just screamed _different._

Elli was tired of it; tired of being on alert every moment she spent outside the safety of her tiny apartment, tired of the world constantly telling her she didn't belong, tired of "mate" and "fella" being the best labels placed on her and tired of her existence rapidly heading towards illegality. The city didn't let her have anything nice, not even love. She'd had it until recently – an incredible young woman named Serana, who was confident, athletic, and so very pretty with her wavy dyed-black hair framing her rounded, freckled face. They had been a couple for a year at the point they had to part, but had known each other since before the name 'Elli' had even passed the lips of the depressed teenager trying hard to be the man she thought she had to be. Serana had helped her through everything – from the difficult early days and the endless bureaucracy that seemed designed to put people off transition to the moment she finally felt comfortable in herself . She was the girlfriend Elli had long dreamed of, though it was a dream that depended on their relationship remaining a secret from a world that would tear them down for their love; a love that was all but forbidden in this society so restricted by its narrow-mindedness.

Neither of them knew how it had happened – maybe they'd been spotted by a nosy passer-by or had their messages tracked – but Serana left the front door of Elli's apartment block one night to be greeted by a gang of Defender thugs. Elli hadn't known until she heard a commotion outside and leant out of her window to find her girlfriend desperately trying to defend herself against a torrent of abuse. She'd sprinted downstairs to save Serana, but merely ended up suffering the same fate, the only miracle being that the encounter hadn't turned violent. That was the moment she knew she had to give Serana up.

Without Serana, Portside held nothing for Elli, and that only served to accelerate her desire to leave. For years, she had dreamed of escape to a planet that would welcome her – she'd read about them; worlds where who you were, who you had been and who you loved made no difference to the way people welcomed you in. Places where people's hands raised up to wave hello instead of trying to punch compliance into anyone who looked different. Sadly for Elli, escaping required money – far more than she could ever hope to save up unless she fancied living on bread and water for (and she'd calculated it many times) thirty-four years. The chance of starting again seemed impossible.

But in a city awash with people who didn't have the greatest of respect for the law, 'impossible' was merely a suggestion if you knew who to talk to. Elli had first heard rumours a few months ago of a freight ship captain who would let people stowaway on board in return for a small fee, and thought nothing more of it beyond noting the information as a potential avenue of escape one day. But after she'd cut off contact with Serana for her own safety, that knowledge returned to the forefront of her mind and ignited her resolve. She barely scraped the money together, taking every cent from her minuscule savings and skipping a few meals to pay for it, but finally, a means of escape was within her grasp.

Elli's bag weighed her down as she strode purposefully through the port's gates, trying to give off the impression that she was allowed to be there. She hadn't packed much – hell, she didn't _own_ much – but the knowledge that her entire life was stuffed into the dark blue holdall at her side made it feel that much heavier. She was getting out of here for good, leaving behind the abuse and the incessant struggle for peace, or at least she would be once she'd located the ship. Automated forklifts trundled quietly around her, loading containers with goods bound for destinations across the galaxy, while smaller boxes were flown suspended from drones whirring above. Elli tried to stay amongst the shadows as much as possible, though some unexpectedly close robots made her jump into the off-white glow of the floodlights a couple of times.

Traversing the vast dock area took her almost half an hour, but Elli managed to find the person she was searching for, leaning against a metal crate smoking. The short, electric blue hair was the woman's defining feature – 'you can't miss her', she'd been told – though the tattooed, muscular body that the woman's camouflage-print tank top showed off caught Elli's attention just as much. She found herself staring a little longer than she should have, unsure whether it was attraction or envy she was feeling.

Faking as much confidence as she could, Elli approached the woman, clearing her throat a few times to avoid embarrassing herself by opening the conversation with a gravelly and decidedly un-feminine croak, 'Are you Oz?'

'Might be,' she took a long drag on the cigarette, seemingly for no reason beyond dramatic effect, 'What do you want?'

'I'm Elli, I messaged you about a ride?'

Oz broke into a cackle that Elli couldn't help but fear was one of derision aimed at the way she looked, but the grin that followed had a tiny degree of warmth, just enough to calm her again, 'Cool, so you're checking into runaway class. Got your ticket?'

'Ticket? I thought I just had to-'

'Joking, kid, you got the cash or not?'

Elli nodded nervously, fishing her phone from the pocket of her oversized grey hoodie. This was what she wore when she wanted (or needed, in most cases) to hide herself and retreat into the safety of anonymous sameness. Or, though this was the first and hopefully only time, when she needed to sneak through a restricted area to hide on-board a freight ship bound for a new, better life. She placed her finger on the screen to unlock the device and held it out apprehensively.

Oz did the same, tapping the screen of her own phone before touching it against Elli's. She paused for a moment, waiting for the confirmation of payment to show up, then placed it back in her pocket, 'On you go. Corridor on your left, right at the end. You don't have to go in right away if you wanna say goodbye to this shithole, but we take off in 30 minutes with or without you.'

Elli muttered an agreement and headed straight for the ramp to the vessel. She had nothing to say to the city that had made her life infinitely harder and sapped every ounce of happiness and optimism from her. It had never given her the chance to embrace her identity, and the one good thing about Portside had been forcibly ripped away from her. She had only determination to start anew, in a world where she didn't feel such an outcast.

The interior of the ship was largely as she had imagined, drawing on memories from the two off-world trips she had made as a child, back when her family acknowledged her existence. These cargo transporters, however, were much more spartan than the vessels that ferried tourists around the solar system, with every sheet of metal, every exposed wire and every bolt serving a purpose and nothing more. It wasn't even painted – bare aluminium lined almost every surface, showing the scars of past scrapes and repairs under the dim lighting of the failing LEDs overhead.

Elli traced her way to the room she'd been directed towards, taking in the relief of having seen the last of her hometown. As she stepped through the doorway, she briefly noted that it was some sort of cargo hold, a large void that ran the length of the ship, filled with large metal containers. But it was less the room that grabbed her attention and more the fact that she was not the only one in it. She had expected to be travelling alone, so to find another person on the journey was a slight surprise. But not quite as much as _who_ it was, sat on top of a small wooden box in a grey tank top and ripped jeans.

'Serana?' she gasped, her eyes flaring with a mix of surprise and worry. Thoughts, unrestrained by logic and rationality, hurried through her mind about what disaster could have caused her now-ex-girlfriend to track her down. Or maybe it was something she had done that Serana was here to enact revenge for. Whatever the case, Elli could not see any positive reason for her to be sitting in front of her now.

'I got your note.'

Elli's gaze fell, any ability to look Serana in the eye stolen by the reminder of how she'd told her she was leaving. She hated herself for not having the guts to say it in person, instead giving her goodbye by scrawling a few words on paper and sliding it underneath Serana's door when she knew she would be out. It was cowardly, but it was far easier than the alternative of a drawn-out, emotional conversation that would surely have made her think twice about her departure, 'I suppose you're here to stop me.'

'Stop you?' Serana slid off the crate, the heel of her boots clanging against the grating below as she walked across the room, then grasped Elli's hand tenderly inside her own as a warming smile crept across her face, 'Of course not! I'm here to go with you.'

'No...' Elli wrenched herself away. It was hard enough to leave Serana behind without having to face her and justify the decision, 'Look, I'm sorry, I have to do this.'

'Not alone, you don't.'

Elli pressed her palms into her forehead, sighing deeply, 'Ser, you've got a perfect life – always Miss Popular, acing every class you take, bright future ahead of you. I don't want you to lose that. You shouldn't have to throw your life away because of some freak like me.'

Fire sparked behind Serana's eyes at hearing Elli's choice of word, 'Don't you _dare_ call yourself that.'

'It's true though!' the guilt tumbled from Elli's mouth in a yell that surprised them both. She huffed out a long breath to calm herself before she continued, 'You know what this city is like, how anyone daring to not be like everyone else is treated! That time they caught you outside mine and started going off at you? That wouldn't be a one-off, you know how often I had to deal with their shit. So why don't you just go back and tell them the big bad trans woman tricked you? I'm sure they wouldn't question _that_ for a second. God... Ser, you deserve more than this; I don't want you to have to live your life in constant fear."

Serana rolled her eyes, exasperated that she wasn't getting through. She wasn't going to let Elli leave on her own without at least trying to make her understand the way she felt about her was stronger than the hate their world held for them, 'I wouldn't care, Elli! I'd give everything up for you... and I will.'

'Don't be stupid, Ser. You've got too much going for you to throw it away for someone like me.'

'What do you mean, "someone like you"?' anger fought the kindness in her expression as she tried to reconcile the love she had for Elli with the frustration at her lack of self-belief, 'Ells, you're everything I have ever wanted. You're beautiful, you're clever, you're-'

'Stop! Don't make this any harder...' Elli anxiously dragged a few fingers through the knotted ends of her dark blonde hair, 'It wasn't supposed to be like this. I was supposed to leave without anyone noticing, go find somewhere in the galaxy where I could have a quiet life. And then you'd carry on without me, undisturbed by the Defenders, and do well at college to become a doctor so you could heal people right across the planet, or whatever it was you wanted to do. Then you could fall in love with someone who makes you happy.'

'I have done. You.'

Her final word felt like a bomb, exploding with an atmosphere that seemed silent and deafening in equal measure. The word 'love' had never featured in their conversations before, and though Elli had often thought about the depth of her feelings for Serana, she could never quite bring herself to say it out loud. There was always the constant undertone of worry that she would unveil a difference in how they saw their future which would end up with her rejection. It was that fear that resurfaced the moment Serana had told her she was coming with her; at least if Serana stayed on Earth, she wouldn't regret leaving everything behind for someone who could never be who she deserved.

'Just go. Please, Ser,' she felt her face heat up, fuelled by the heartbreak that having to say goodbye was causing. The longer Serana dragged it out, the more painful it became, 'Get off the ship and forget about me. Get back to your future, find someone else, be successful. I'm not worth this.'

A hand settled on her shoulder, giving it the very slightest of squeezes, and Elli hated how comforting it felt. Serana had always been able to calm her with the simplest of gestures, be it a light stroke along the back of the hand, a momentary grasp of a leg or even just a smile. There was something about her touch that relaxed Elli every time, as though Serana's body held some form of calming magic that flowed into her with every connection they made, however brief.

'You _are_ ,' Serana whispered, 'Eleanor Fletcher-'

'Not short for Eleanor.'

'Shush, I'm being emphatic. Eleanor Fletcher, you are worth running away with. And I know you don't see it that way because you're worried that you won't be good enough for me, or that my life would be better if I threw myself into studying, but I promise you that is not the case. You are more than you give yourself credit for – more incredible, more beautiful, more valuable – and you deserve to be happy. _We_ deserve to be happy.'

Hearing such praise was uncomfortable for Elli, it always had been. She didn't find any of it accurate, not when she was such a mess of a person still searching for the tiniest bit of meaning in her life. Deserving happiness was a noble statement for a perfect universe, but they both knew the one they lived in was far from perfect. The best Elli could hope for was to find somewhere she wasn't regularly subjected to abuse from strangers just for existing.

'Then go be happy.'

'I can't. Not without you.'

Elli wanted to protest, to launch into a tirade to try and make Serana understand that she wasn't worth leaving for, but something stopped her. It wasn't just the tone of voice or the expression on her face, there was something bigger, something intense – an aura of determination that she felt powerless to fight against. Not one of coercion, but of steadfastness, of support. _Of love._

'You... you really mean that, don't you?' she said quietly, almost in shock that anyone would sacrifice so much for a disaster of a woman like her.

Serana took her hand again, and this time Elli didn't pull away. Instead she savoured the touch, the electricity that flowed from the connection between them that warmed her and receded the doubts in her mind, 'Of course I do. I love you, Elli.'

Chestnut eyes met deep azure, locking the two lovers in a wordless gaze that took them away from the grubby cargo hold of some delinquent's ship, away from the city that had both brought them together and almost split them apart, away from the planet that they held no affection for and which held none for them. None of it mattered in that moment. They had each other, and whether the future held joy or pain, success or failure, Elli saw deep into Serana's eyes that the two of them would share in it with a resilience and a confidence that was greater than either of them had alone.

'I... I love you too,' Elli cut into the silence with a soft, earnest whisper, 'Are you really sure you want to do this?'

Serana nodded, 'Yeah, let's do it.'


End file.
